David Einhorn’s Books: Recommended Reading List

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David Einhorn is president and co-founder of Greenlight Capital, a long-short value-oriented hedge fund, which started with $1 million under management in 1996, and now has over $10 billion under management. The fund has been closed to new investors for several years. From 1996-2010, Greenlight has generated greater than 30% gross returns on an annual basis.

David Einhorn is Chairman of the Board of Greenlight Capital Re, Ltd. (NASDAQ:GLRE) and serves on the boards of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, and the Robin Hood Foundation.

Einhorn graduated summa cum laude with distinction in all subjects from Cornell University, where he earned a B.A. from the College of Arts and Sciences.

For more on David Einhorn, head over to ValueWalk’s David Einhorn Resource Page, where you can find a detailed rundown of his background, bio and investment philosophy.

David Einhorn: Authored books

David Einhorn’s battle with Allied Capital. In 2002, David Einhorn, the president of Greenlight Capital, gave a speech at a charity investment conference and was asked to share his best investment idea. He described his reasons why Greenlight had sold short the shares of Allied Capital, a leader in the private finance industry. What followed was a firestorm of controversy. Minute by minute, the book delves deep inside Wall Street, showing how the $6-billion hedge fund Greenlight Capital conducts its investment research and detailing the maneuvers of an unscrupulous company. Along the way, you’ll witness feckless regulators, compromised politicians, and the barricades our capital markets have erected against exposing misconduct from important Wall Street customers.

Einhorn released an updated version of the book in December 2010 titled Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, A Long Short (and Now Complete) Story, Updated with New Epilogue. The epilogue also discusses the collapse of Allied Capital, and his short of Lehman Brothers. David Einhorn is donating 100% of the proceeds from the book to charity.

David Einhorn: Recommended books

Margin of SafetySeth Klarman’s book, which is one of the most stolen books from libraries. Used copies of the book cost several hundred dollars. Margin of Safety is a rare insight into the investment philosophy of Seth Klarman, who tends to shy away from publicity. The book focuses on value investing with an emphasis on special situation investing. While, Margin of Safety does not get too much into the specific investments that Seth Klarman made, it gets into the theory behind it.

You Can Be a Stock Market GeniusJoel Greenblatt. Similar ar to Seth Klarman’s Margin of Safety; however, Greenblatt focuses more on specific investments instead of focusing mostly on the process. Klarman (here)and Dan Loeb (here) both recommended reading the book. Greenblatt discusses many examples where investors can make high returns including, spin-offs, recapitalizations, and LEAPs.

Liar’s PokerMichael Lewis. Liar’s Poker discusses Lewis’s time on Wall Street, mostly focusing on his career as a bond trader. Lewis in a humorous manner writes about the rise and the fall of the Salomon Brothers. Lewis also discusses junk bonds at length, and the fraud of the junk bond king, Michael Milken. Seth Klarman also recommended reading “anything by Michael Lewis”.